Beneath Flanders Fields. The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918 (review)

The Ypres salient is fifteen kilometres long and about ten deep. Between 1914, when fighting started here, and 1918, when it ended, this small space was one of the most infamous and hotly contested battlefields on the Western Front. Fighting here was constant, punctuated by three major 'battles' (perhaps more appropriately remembered as 'campaigns') which each, in its own way, established a new benchmark for horror in a horrible war. Cemeteries in the salient contain the remains of approximately a quarter of a million fallen soldiers. The peculiarly ferocious nature of the fighting in this corner of Belgium can be glimpsed in the fact that almost an equivalent number of soldiers – Commonwealth, German, French – simply disappeared here, and have no final resting place at all. They are presumed to have been killed hereabouts although their bodies were never found. This much is fairly common knowledge.

Beneath Flanders Fields considers an aspect of the fighting in the Salient less well known, the war waged underground by specialist engineering companies, Commonwealth 'tunnellers' and German 'pionieren.' The focus throughout is primarily on the Commonwealth efforts, as the more extensive and successful. The book is divided into four parts. The first forty pages provide background information concerning the geography of the salient and the history of military mining. The second part (150 pages) concerns military mining and ends with the contribution of British tunnellers to one of the most striking operational successes of the war, the capture of Messines Ridge on 7 June 1917. While this is the principal focus of the work, the third section (sixty-two pages) is the most interesting. This deals with the employment of tunnelling resources to provide protection for troops within the Salient. A largely forgotten aspect of trench geography, and the focus of this section, is the creation of underground complexes of marvellous complexity and extent in an attempt to find safety underground. By 1918, the trenches visible on the surface – well represented and remembered – were the tip of an underground iceberg. The last section, a little ragged, concerns the troublesome legacy of the underground war around contemporary Ypres, followed by some illustrations in the afterword about the subsequent fate of British tunnellers. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with photographs, diagrams, and vignettes drawn from contemporary accounts, illustrating the nature and often esoteric aspects of the tunnellers' war. Indeed, the book is so copiously illustrated that had I not read it for review, I might well have been tempted to put it down immediately as yet another Great War coffee table book. This would have been a mistake.

Despite a few flaws in organization – the first few chapters might have been condensed, and the chapter on Ypres, ninety years on, was intrusive and might have been excluded – this is an excellent book and a useful contribution to the historiography of the Great War. This book, however, will not find the audience it deserves. It is probably too specific to be of general interest. As well, it is simply too original in subject matter to make a great success. Few will be aware that such a large hole in Great War literature exists. Lastly, although probably best understood as a historian's book, Beneath Flanders Fields was not written by professional historians. Peter Barton is a filmmaker and author of illustrated books including at least one other on the First World War. Peter Doyle is a geologist, and Johan Vandewalle is a civil engineer by training. The shame is, of course, that without the range of skills held by the several authors the book could not have achieved the level of understanding it demonstrates, or the attractive presentation which is, in the end, one of its greatest strengths. A historian might have tackled the subject but in isolation would have done an inferior job.